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Friday, April 1, 2016

Yemen: Baha’i Adherent Faces Death Penalty

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(Sanaa) – Yemeni
authorities should drop all charges against a member of the Baha’i
faith detained since December 2013, apparently for his religious
beliefs. Prosecutors are expected to seek the death penalty for Hamed
Kamal Muhammad bin Haydara in a court hearing scheduled for April 3,
2016.
Yemeni authorities should stop the persecution of the country’s Baha’i community, Human Rights Watch said.
“The Yemeni authorities have committed an injustice by prosecuting
Haydara for his religious beliefs and compounding that injustice by
seeking to execute him,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director. “The charges should be dropped and Haydara should be released.”

The Yemeni authorities have committed an injustice by prosecuting
Haydara for his religious beliefs and compounding that injustice by
seeking to execute him.

Joe Stork

Deputy Middle East Director.

Haydara was detained
on December 3, 2013, by officers from Yemen’s National Security Bureau
(NSB), an intelligence agency. He was held in an NSB detention center in
the capital, Sanaa, for almost a year, as officers beat him and
subjected him to electric shocks and other mistreatment.
On January 8, 2015, the Specialized Criminal Court prosecutor issued
an indictment claiming that Haydara was an Iranian citizen, using a
false name, who arrived in Yemen only in 1991. Yet photocopies of his
Yemini ID and passport provided by his wife show he was born in Yemen in
1964. The prosecutor also charged him with collaborating with Israel by
working for the Universal House of Justice, the Baha’i supreme
governing institution, which is based in Haifa, Israel. The prosecutor
also alleged that Haydara lured potential Muslim converts to the Baha’i
faith through charitable giving and tried to “establish a homeland for
the followers of the Baha’i faith” in Yemen.
In the indictment, which Human Rights Watch reviewed, the prosecutor
charges Haydara under Yemen’s penal code with committing, among other
crimes, “an act that violates the independence of the republic, its
unity, or the integrity of its lands,” “working for a foreign state’s
interests,” “insulting Islam,” and “apostasy.” The prosecutor is seeking
“the maximum possible penalty,” which for some of these charges is
death, as well as confiscation of his property.
Four members of the Baha’i community who have been monitoring the
court proceedings told Human Rights Watch that since Haydara’s 2013
arrest, his case has had 13 court hearings, but he has only been allowed
to attend three. The local human rights group Mwatana monitored the
most recent hearing, on February 28, 2016, for which Haydara was absent.
The director of Mwatana, Radhiya al-Mutawakil, who was at the session, said the judge asked the prosecutor, Rajeh Zayyed, about Haydara’s absence, but received no explanation.
Zayyed claims to have had 14 interrogation sessions with Haydara,
but according to Haydara’s lawyer, Abdulkarim al-Hamadi, the prosecution
only interrogated Haydara twice, and brought him to the prosecutor’s
office twice more but then did not question him. Al-Hamadi has only been
allowed to communicate with his client by phone.
At the February 28 hearing, Zayyed reiterated that the prosecution
is seeking the death penalty. Human Rights Watch opposes the death
penalty in all circumstances as an inherently cruel form of punishment.
Haydara's wife, Elham Muhammad Hossain Zara’i, told Human Rights
Watch that in a September 4 meeting with one of the judges presiding
over the case, he threatened her with prison because of her faith and
told her that all Baha’is should be in prison.
Since the Houthis, also known as Ansar Allah, took control of Sanaa
and other areas of Yemen in September 2014, the judiciary has
significantly slowed its processing of cases, though many employees
within the judiciary system have remained the same.
Most of the charges against Haydara relate to his practice of the
Baha’i faith. They violate the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights (ICCPR), which Yemen ratified in 1987. Article 18
states: “Everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience
and religion. This right shall include freedom to have or to adopt a
religion or belief of his choice, and freedom, either individually or in
community with others and in public or private, to manifest his
religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching.”
Yemen’s penal code includes provisions that impose criminal
penalties for renouncing Islam as well as attempting to convert Muslims
to other faiths.
About 1,000 Baha’i members live in Yemen. The case against Haydara
is not the first of its kind, representatives of the global Baha’i
community said. In June 2008, National Security officers arrested
Behrooz Rouhani, a Baha’i man, and two visiting Baha’i friends, all of
whom carried Iranian passports, at Rouhani’s home in Sanaa. Rouhani told
Human Rights Watch that the officers handcuffed and blindfolded them
and then searched his home, confiscating many Baha’i books, video
cassettes, and documents. They said they were kept handcuffed and
blindfolded the first two days of their detention.
Officers arrested a fourth Baha’i man, who carried an Iraqi
passport, the next day. Rouhani said that officers interrogated him
about his faith the first week every night for five or six hours,
accusing him of trying to convert Muslims and of collaboration with
Israel. The four were released without charge after 120 days. The
authorities told them to leave Yemen within two months, but this order
was later revoked and two of them still live in Yemen.
A person who was at the trial told Human Rights Watch they heard the
prosecutor, Zayyed, use derogatory language against the Baha’i
community, saying that its members committed hostile acts toward Yemen.
Immediately after an earlier hearing in Haydara’s case, on March 8,
2015, Zayyed apprehended two members of the Baha’i community who had
been monitoring the trial, Nadim al-Sakkaf and his brother, Nader Tawfiq
al-Sakkaf, both told Human Rights Watch. They said that Zayyed tried to
get the judge to issue a court order to formalize the arrest but he
refused, so after checking their names off a list of members of the
Baha’i community and holding them in the courthouse guard booth for two
hours, he transferred them to the Political Security Organization’s
headquarters. Security forces held them for two days, interrogating them
several times about their faith and asking for names of other members,
then released them without charge.
Local human rights activists have reported that past Yemeni
governments also imposed unlawful restrictions on other religious
minorities, including Christian, Jewish, and Ismaili individuals. Based
on comments she said she heard from NSB officers, Zara’i fears
authorities may deport Haydara to Iran. Punishing citizens with exile is
a violation of fundamental rights under international law. Article 12
of the ICCPR states, “No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right
to enter his own country.” The United Nations Human Rights Committee,
the international expert committee that monitors compliance with the
ICCPR, has interpreted article 12 to mean that this includes exiling or
banning citizens based on repressive domestic laws. The committee
concluded that, “There are few, if any, circumstances in which
deprivation of the right to enter one’s own country could be reasonable.
A State party must not, by stripping a person of nationality or by
expelling an individual to a third country, arbitrarily prevent this
person from returning to his or her own country.”
Even if Haydara were found not to be a Yemeni citizen, under
international law he still may not be deported to a country where he
faces persecution or abuse. Because of his Baha’i faith, Haydara would
probably face persecution in Iran, Human Rights Watch said.
Haifa, in present-day Israel, has been the Baha’i faith’s
administrative headquarters since 1868, when the city was under Ottoman
rule. The Iranian government, like the Yemeni authorities in Haydara’s
case, routinely uses the connection to accuse Baha’is in Iran of spying
for Israel, with which Iran has hostile relations. The Baha’i faith
originated in Iran, but its members suffer severe persecution there, including arbitrary detention and prosecution related solely to their religious activities, restrictions on access to higher education, confiscation of property, and destruction and desecration of their cemeteries.
Iran’s judiciary often charges and convicts Baha’is of unlawful links
with foreign governments, including Israel. Seven leaders of the Iranian
Baha’i community are serving
prison sentences, ranging from seven to 20 years, on charges that
include propaganda against the state and espionage on behalf of foreign
governments.
“The prosecution of Hamed Kamal bin Haydara is symbolic of the
broader attack on Yemen’s Baha’i community,” Stork said. “If the current
authorities want to show the world that they represent an inclusive
Yemen, they need to release him and anyone else being held for their
opinions and beliefs.”

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